Doctors Make the Worst Patients
by Flavato Forever
Summary: Fluffy two-shot: Toby is hurt on a mission and the rest of the team must take care of him.
1. Chapter 1

**This fluffy little two-shot is for Cyra Bergen - hope you like it, Sam!**

 **Also, this got so long that I thought it shouldn't be one chapter, but I wasn't really sure how to break it up, so sorry if the chapter break happens in a weird place.**

* * *

"Toby, this is a bad idea," Happy muttered through the coms.

Toby pressed himself up against the hallway wall; he was standing in what Walter had said would be a security-camera blind spot, but if he so much as twitched in the wrong direction the cameras would pick him up and the building's security guards would come running for him.

He imagined Happy, sitting with the rest of the team in the surveillance van they had borrowed for the mission, grinding her teeth with worry.

"I'm open to alternatives here, Hap, but no one seems ready to offer any."

"Just get out of there and we'll think of another plan."

Toby shook his head even though he knew Happy couldn't see him.

"It'll be fine. Walter, have you cut the camera feed yet?"

"Working on it," Walter muttered. Toby heard what sounded like the muffled clicks of a keyboard coming through his earpiece.

"You're not gonna have enough time to get to the bomb." A hint of panic had come into Happy's voice.

A hissing took over the com line, swallowing Toby's response.

"What's that?" Paige asked, a slight tremor in her voice.

"Toby?" Cabe asked, finger on his earpiece, as if that would help his words get to the psychiatrist, as if he might be able to reach through their radio signal and help him.

Suddenly, a loud roar caused the whole team to jump. They all looked out the van windshield to see a huge crack run along the outside of the building across the street, right between the second- and third-floor windows. The building fell slowly, floor by floor, cement and metal and glass collapsing in on itself like a stack of dominos. Happy screamed Toby's name, but no one could hear her over the sound of the destruction.

* * *

Toby half-collapsed on the sofa in the garage, looking much more exhausted than anyone should after a twenty-foot walk in from the car.

"What can I get you?" Paige asked, a competent-mom veneer coming over her. "Water? An ice pack? Are you hungry?"

"I'm fine, thanks," Toby breathed, eyes closed.

"You have to take your antibiotic pill," Sylvester reminded him. "The doctor said three times a day."

"I'll have it with lunch. It needs to be taken with food, anyway."

"It's lunchtime now, kid." Cabe held out his watch, though he was too far for Toby to see its hands.

"So we'll eat," Paige said, smiling. Food was something she could handle. The ability to _do_ something was a warm relief after two days of medical jargon being tossed around by stoic doctors while she sat by helplessly.

Toby sighed, feeling more tired than hungry.

Paige, Cabe, and Happy went into the kitchen, as the only three uninjured people on the team with any hope of making edible food. While they worked, Sylvester and Walter tried to entertain Toby with a deck of cards.

"Poker?" Sylvester asked, riffling the cards deftly.

"Recovering gambling addict here, Sly," Toby replied, eyebrows raised. "Trying to avoid poker. And craps."

"I don't think either of us know how to play craps, anyway," Water said. "What about bridge?"

" _Bridge_? The game old ladies play while gossiping about their neighbors? How on Earth do you two know how to play bridge?"

Walter shrugged. "It's easy for us." He motioned to himself and then to Sylvester. "It's a game where counting cards is advantageous."

"Newsflash, One-Ninety-Seven: _all_ games are games where counting cards is advantageous."

Walter shrugged. "Regardless, counting cards is helpful in bridge. And geniuses are good at counting cards."

Toby rolled his eyes. "See, you tell yourself that, and then you find yourself thirty-thousand dollars in the hole at a back-alley craps game in Brooklyn, wondering how in God's name your IQ let you get there."

Sylvester looked off-put by the story disguised as a second-person narrative and tried to move the conversation back to the gambling-free present.

"Do you know how to play?"

"What, bridge?" Toby nodded. " 'Course. Learned it at my mother's knee."

"Really?"

"No, Smelly Jim taught me on Christmas when I was ten while my dad was betting on the west-coast races. But I do know how to play."

Sylvester grimaced. Water looked unperturbed.

"Bridge it is."

"Whoa, hold up, we need a fourth player here."

Ralph jumped up from his perch at the kitchen table. "I'll play."

" _You_ know how to play bridge?"

Ralph nodded. "My grandma likes it."

Toby looked at Sylvester triumphantly. "See? It's a grandma game." He turned back to Ralph. "Alright, bud, you can be my partner."

Ralph pursed his lips. "You're on oxycodone, right? I think I might rather be Sylvester's partner."

Toby laughed. "You think the painkillers are gonna stop me from winning? Look at these goons, kid." He pointed with his left thumb at Walter and Sylvester. "I could beat 'em with one hand tied behind my back. Which is good, because this arm" - he shrugged his bad shoulder, wincing with the effort - "is busted, anyway."

Walter frowned, looking like he might protest Toby's insult, but he held his tongue. Ralph nodded and pulled a chair over to sit across from Toby as Sylvester dealt. Before long, the four men were all hunched over, staring at their cards intently.

* * *

They only got through two tricks - Ralph and Toby took both, despite the fact that half of their team could barely hold his cards without dropping them - before Paige announced that lunch was ready.

"Mac and cheese," she said, bringing a big bowl out and setting it on the coffee table in between the men, careful not to disrupt the cards set out there. "I would've like there to be a little more protein with this meal, or at least a vegetable, but we didn't have much in the fridge."

Happy and Cabe followed her, carrying spoons and smaller bowls.

"This looks perfect," Sylvester said. "Thanks, guys."

"No problem at all," Paige replied. Happy and Cabe nodded beside her.

Walter scooped some pasta into a bowl and then placed it carefully on Toby's lap. Happy held up an amoxicillin tablet, which Toby accepted and put beside his leg before starting to eat.

Thanks to an exceptionally-heavy support beam's collapsing on top of him, Toby's right arm was in a sling by his side. But having to eat with his left hand didn't really bother him; he had developed decent ambidexterity during his surgery internship.

A bigger issue was trying to swallow the mouthfuls of pasta. He knew he should be hungry - he'd had nothing but minuscule portions of hospital food for the past two days - but the painkillers had chased away his appetite and he had to force eat bite.

The rest of the team started filling their own bowls. Soon, everyone was seated around the makeshift card table, eating quietly.

Paige looked around. Her geniuses often took meals as a time to each lose themselves in their own mental rabbit holes, and that seemed to be happening now. She had decided it was her job, as self-asserted team mom, to force them to interact in the rare instances that they were all together and not trying to save the world.

She ran through the few conversation starters that might elicit response, and landed on, "Toby, how's the pain?"

Toby welcomed the excuse to put down his food for a minute. "Good, good. That oxycodone Dr. Benson gave me was super effective. I barely remember I have a broken arm."

"And a broken rib. And a pulmonary contusion. And a torn MCL," Sylvester reminded him. "And a lesion on your forehead. And-"

"We get it, Sly. Thanks," Happy interrupted. Over the past two days, she'd had enough of people going over all of Toby's injuries, all the ways the building collapse might have killed him.

"And you all were playing bridge?" Paige asked.

"Like Meemaw likes," Ralph answered between bites.

"Yeah, we were in the middle of crushing Walt and Sly when you guys came in with lunch." Toby stuck his fist out and Ralph bumped it with his own.

Walter rolled his eyes. "You took two tricks. Don't let it go to your head. And besides, you were the declaring side; you had the upper hand going in."

Toby rolled his eyes. "Excuses, excuses. I bet you we'll win this hand and three of the next four, at least." Seeing Happy's glare, he added, "I mean 'bet' figuratively, of course."

"Impossible." Sylvester pushed his glasses further up his nose. "It depends too much on the cards you get dealt."

Toby raised his eyebrows. "I think we could do it."

Walter put down his bowl and crossed his arm. "Alright, then. Finish eating so I can prove you're too big for your britches."

"Too big for my britches? Who are you, Davy Crockett?"

"It's an exceptionally useful phrase, especially for anyone who's friends with someone as cocky as you."

Happy rolled her eyes. "Alright, calm down, guys. At least let us finish lunch before you start grunting and beating your chests."

Toby ignored his girlfriend. "You finished eating, O'Brien? Because I'm ready to take some more tricks from you."

"Let's go."

Paige and Happy looked at each other and sighed, and then began cleaning up from lunch.

* * *

After they finished cleaning up from lunch, Happy got absorbed in her latest project - deconstructing an old Chevy engine her father had given her - and Paige started working on case reports. Cabe watched the bridge game for a while, but he got tired after about thirty minutes and left for home, saying he'd call if they got another case. Occasionally, the bridge trash talking got loud enough to make Paige look up from her computer, but normally Happy would then yell from across the garage and get the players to quiet down. Paige managed to get through the first twenty of the thirty-seven forms she had to fill out relating to destruction of public property, destruction of private property, on-the-job injury, and a whole manner of other things she wasn't really sure Scorpion had even actually done, before the bridge game ended.

"That was the final trick," Sylvester said, cutting through the silence that had engulfed the garage since the start of the last of the fifth and final hand.

"Did Toby and Ralph do it?" Paige asked.

Walter's glare answered her question before Toby got out his snarky, "Of course we did."

Walter rubbed his temple. "I don't believe it."

Sylvester started rounding up the cards. "The odds of being able to win four hands of bridge out of five, even for adept bridge players-"

"Which we are," Toby cut in, smiling knowingly at Ralph.

"-are astronomically low," Sylvester continued.

Walter shook his head. "You two must have cheated."

"Really, Walter?" Toby looked theatrically offended. "You can't accept defeat, so you just assume two of your closest friends were _cheating_?"

"How else could you have done it?"

Toby held up his good hand and counted off. "One: we can count cards just as well as you. Two: I'm a gambling addict and a Harvard-trained psychiatrist; I know what cards people have and when they have them. Three: Ralph's smarter than you, so I'm pretty sure he brings our team's average IQ up past yours and Sylvester's. Need I go on?"

"I have to object to the third point. Ralph's IQ might be higher than mine, but yours-"

"Okay, okay, calm down, boys," Paige called across the garage. "Why don't you just start playing a different game?"

Walter stood up. "I think I'm done with games, thanks though."

Toby rolled his eyes and then looked at Ralph. "Hey, bud, just remember: no matter how Walter acts, a wicked-high IQ doesn't actually _have_ to correspond to an astronomically-huge-and-easily-wounded ego, okay?"

"I heard that," Walter grumped, sitting down at his desk.

"I purposefully didn't whisper, thank you very much." Toby wrinkled his nose at Walter, an only-slightly-more-grown-up version of sticking out his tongue. "Alright, Ralph and Sly, what games can we play with three people?"

"Actually," Ralph said, "I have to do my English homework."

"Oh? What's your homework?"

"I'm supposed to read two chapters of _Pride and Prejudice_."

" _Pride and Prejudice_?" Toby straightened up in his seat. "Let's read it together."

Ralph raised his eyebrows. "You _want_ to read my book?"

" _Pride and Prejudice_ is the original chick flick. Or, well, chick _lit_ technically, I guess, but still. It's the granddaddy of all my favorite movies."

" _You_ like romance movies?" Sylvester looked at Toby dubiously.

"Oh, Sly, buddy, I eat, sleep, and _breathe_ romance movies. Tell him, Happy."

Happy didn't look up from her work while responding, "We've watched _The Notebook_ , like, seven times."

"Please, Ralph. Read it to me. I'd be forever grateful."

Ralph held up his hands. "Okay. Let me just go get it from my backpack."

"Wait," Paige said while Ralph went to get his bag from the kitchen. "Is anyone hungry for dinner yet?"

"Not with _Pride and Prejudice_ on the horizon, that's for sure."

Paige rolled her eyes. "Seriously."

"I think we're good, Paige, thanks." Sylvester smiled at her.

"Okay, but just let me know when you get hungry and we can run over to Kovalsky's to pick something up."

Ralph returned, holding a worn paperback book in his hand. "Found it."

Toby grinned excitedly. "Alright, where are you in the story?"

"Charlotte just married Mr. Collins."

"Oh-ho-ho, some really exciting stuff is about to happen. Come on, let's get started."


	2. Chapter 2

Toby looked up from his horizontal perch on the couch when Ralph's voice, which had been ringing through the garage for almost an hour, stopped.

"Why'd you stop reading?"

"I only had two chapters to read."

"But you read four chapters. I thought you were going to keep going."

Ralph shrugged. "I read next class's reading, too. But I kind of got bored."

"Oh, come on. We're finally getting to the good part."

Walt rolled his eyes from his desk. "There's no good part of _Pride and Prejudice_ , trust me."

Toby shot him a melodramatic glare. "Bite your tongue, Walt."

"Why are you even reading that book, Ralph?" Sylvester asked. "It's not exactly the kind of thing that's assigned in Robotics 101."

"My mom told me that, if I wanted to take more than two classes at college, I had to have to take an English class."

"Humanities are important," Paige called over. She was only half listening to the conversation; she was finally in the home stretch of the Toby-injury paperwork and was typing intently on her keyboard to finish the last form.

"Normally I'd disagree," Toby said. "But this class assigned you _Pride and Prejudice_ \- which, if you love me, you'll keep reading to me."

Ralph groaned. "But I'm so bored. Nothing interesting is happening. It's so predictable."

Toby's eyes widened. " _Predictable_? Did you really just call a book with one of the greatest plot twists in literary history _predictable_?"

A look of dubiousness took over Ralph's face. "Really? The greatest plot twist in literary history?"

"One of them, yeah. I mean, when you take the book in its historical context-"

"Okay, Toby," Happy interrupted. "There was a reason I never went to college. I don't think anyone wants to hear your analysis of a two-hundred-year-old book."

Toby opened his mouth to protest but Paige cut him off.

"Is anyone hungry for dinner yet?"

"Yes," Happy, Sylvester, and Ralph said in unison, more out of a desire to avoid Toby's pestering than anything else.

"Alright, then we'll get food."

Toby laid his head down on the throw pillow while Paige took everyone's dinner order - a rather unnecessary task, considering the fact that most of the team was coming with her.

He stayed there, eyes closed, listening while everyone left the garage. The vibrations from each person's footsteps rippled through the couch lightly, causing a tiny ache in his broken arm. Perhaps this was the start of the predicting-weather-via-his-bad-arm thing that his grandmother used to be able to do. Not that there was much weather to predict in Southern California, save blazing sun and unbearable heat. Still, it might be fun to be able to, on East-Coast missions, tell the team that it was going to rain a half hour before clouds darkened the sky.

Toby thought back to his anatomy professor at Harvard, who always wore the best ties. He had been wearing one with purple elephants on it on the day they discussed the effect of barometric changes on previously-injured bones. Toby allowed a slideshow of Professor Brown's best ties to run through his head, all saved by his nearly-perfect memory, despite the years that had passed since he was in med school. He was only two months into the semester when he felt himself softly falling asleep.

* * *

Toby groaned slightly. Walter looked up from his computer, ready to shout for Paige or Happy before remembering the rest of the team had left to pick up Kovalsky's for dinner. He thought back to what Paige had called out when she left, _take care of Toby_. It had been something of an afterthought; no one really expected him to be any good as a nurse, surely. Paige probably assumed Toby would be okay until she got back.

"Are you alright, Toby?" Walter asked, hoping his friend would shoot back some sarcastic comment as an affirmative answer.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Toby said, his voice strained. "It's just that amoxicillin. It's making me nauseas."

Walter got up and walked over to the sofa, where Toby lay motionless.

"Can I get you anything? Soup? I've heard saltines can help…"

Toby smiled, his face looking slightly pale. "Why don't you leave the doctoring to the doctor, Walt? I'm good, really. It'll pass."

Walter furrowed his eyebrows. As a child, Megan had been occasionally afflicted with mysterious bouts of horrible nausea, which the doctors said might or might not be related to her MS diagnosis. Walter didn't want to watch his friend suffer the way his sister had.

"Something to get your mind off it, then." He sat down on the chair next to Toby's head.

"What did you have in mind? Wait, no, let me guess: analyzing computer algorithms? Figuring out which restaurants in Seattle have fermented fish with cod oil for the mission next week? Or have you managed to come up with something even _more_ boring?"

Walter felt enough pity for Toby that he smiled at the sarcasm.

"I was thinking more along the lines of a trip to the roof. Megan used to love the fresh air when she was feeling nauseated. We could see who knows more constellations."

"No way, we both know you know way more constellations than me." But, even as Toby shook his head, he moved to sit up. Walter jumped forward to help him, placing a gentle, steadying hand on Toby's left shoulder.

It took a lot of time and assistance to get Toby up two sets of stairs on the way to the roof. Once he conquered the last step - a task his injured lungs found to be almost Herculean - he paused to lean on the roof's cement railing while Walter pulled up two chairs.

"Okay," Toby said as he sat down. "Because I'd be at a disadvantage even if I wasn't high on prescription-strength narcotics, I'm gonna claim the Big Dipper for myself. Toby one, Walter zero." The words sucked oxygen from his already-struggling lungs; he had to gulp for air when he finished.

Walter laughed. "If you're going to be like that, I'm taking the Little Dipper. One all."

"Scorpio." Toby pointed to the scorpion in the sky. Paige liked to say it was their team's mascot constellation.

"It's actually called Scorpi _us_ , technically."

"Correct my names all you want, Walt; it's just gonna give me an opportunity to get ahead of you. Hercules."

"Alright, fine, use the wrong names then. Draco."

They went on like that, continuing even after their teammates pulled up in Cabe's SUV, even after Paige found them on the roof, even after Happy brought up two bowls of soup and another amoxicillin tablet. They kept going until Happy, exhausted from spending two nights at the hospital worrying about her boyfriend, came up to the roof to ask Toby - more politely than she would've thought she had in her - to come downstairs so they could go home.

* * *

Toby leaned on Happy heavily as they stood in the elevator on the way up to their fourth-floor apartment. The movement upward caused him to get slightly light-headed, and Happy saw his eyes glaze over.

"Hey, hey," she said, shifting her weight to be able to better hold him up, "look alive, Curtis. You gotta stay on your feet, just for five more minutes."

"Mm." His eyelids were growing heavy. He blinked twice to try to wake himself up.

When the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened, Toby stumbled out; Happy lept to follow him. It was all she could do to keep him upright long enough to get him through their apartment door, down the hall, and into their bed.

Toby groaned as he lay down. Happy bit her lip.

"What's wrong? What's hurting?"

"Mm... Everything," Toby whispered, too tired to try to hide his pain from her.

"Everything?" Happy's voice was small. She hadn't really listened while the doctors went over the painkiller protocol; was it too soon to give him another oxycodone?

"Yeah... Just a little. Everything hurts a little. S'okay."

Happy placed a gentle hand on Toby's head, something she had seen Paige do to Ralph a hundred times. "I'm sorry, Toby, but I need to change the your gauze."

"Change the gauze... S'good. Don't want... infection." Toby, on the fanciful fringe between consciousness and sleep, was spouting medical half-nonsense.

Happy had to go back to her truck to retrieve Toby's satchel, which held the extra gauze. It was a long trip down to the parking lot, alone in the dark, left with nothing to keep her mind from dwelling on those awful moments in between when the building collapsed and when Toby's voice came scratchily through the coms, assuring the team that he was alive.

Happy shook her head to clear it and then started running through her Toby-to-do list to keep her mind occupied. She'd actually paid attention to the abrasion-management instructions, knowing the burden for the late-night and early-morning care would fall on her. Remembering the doctor's matter-of-fact words helped calm her, and, by the time she reached her apartment, she almost felt like she knew what she was doing.

Toby was snoring softly when she got back to their bedroom, so she shook the foot of his good leg - the only body part she could think of that was unbroken enough to shake - to wake him.

"Toby, you have to stay awake. I have to change your gauze, remember?"

"Gauze... Like a mummy?"

Happy chuckled; he wasn't even coherent enough to try to sound smart. It was nice to see him with his guard so far down, even if it was only because of a mix of extreme exhaustion and prescription pain medication.

 _Replacing the gauze twice a day prevents infection_ , the dark-haired doctor had said. Happy pulled the gauze packets out of Toby's satchel.

 _Wash your hands first_ , she remembered the doctor's telling her. She walked to the bathroom and turned the faucet on, taking her time rubbing the soap on her hands. This was a part of the process - the only part of the process, really - that she knew she could do correctly.

When she was done, she dried her hands carefully on a paper towel - paper, because cloth towels harbor bacteria - and went into the kitchen, careful not to touch anything. A cut the size of Toby's needed to be soaked in warm water twice a day. It was something to do with facilitating blood flow; Toby had played the Harvard-trained-physician bit enough in the hospital that his doctors didn't really explain the reasoning behind it, figuring he would know. But it was hard to submerge the forehead in water, so instead Happy was supposed to use a hot, wet hand towel.

" _But you just said hand towels harbor bacteria."_

" _If you boil them, it kills all the bacteria."_

"Boil _them?"_

But that's what she did. She got a clean towel from the hall closet - opening the door with her elbow to keep her hands clean - and placed it on the kitchen counter while she prepared a pot of boiling water. (She couldn't figure out how to get the pot out of the lazy Susan without using her hands, so she just gave up and said she'd wash them again afterwards.) Once the water reached a "rolling boil" - a phrase she'd read often enough on pasta boxes to be wary of a doctor using it when giving medical advice - she dropped the towel in and set a timer for two minutes.

" _But won't the towel burn him?"_

" _You have to let it cool for two minutes."_

" _How? Won't it get dirty if I set it on the counter?"_

" _Set it on a clean paper towel."_

The doctor had said those words almost with surprise, as if it was inconceivable that someone as medically-well-versed as Toby would end up with someone as incompetent as Happy. She frowned as she made a small bed of fresh paper towels for the hand towel, feeling more and more unsure of herself as she got further into the procedure.

Once the hand towel had cooled, she picked it up, careful to touch only the corner even though her hands were freshly washed, and brought it into the bedroom. Toby was asleep again, but he was on his back, forehead cut facing the ceiling, so she figured it was okay.

She carefully pulled at the medical tape holding the old gauze onto Toby's forehead until it came off. His cut glared at her, a crater of angry red and brown on an otherwise-smooth, pale face.

Miraculously, this cut was the only area of Toby's skin broken when the building collapsed. His clothes and shoes had probably protected all other parts of his body, the doctors said. But head wounds bleed a lot; even Happy knew that. So when the team finally found Toby, after an hour of searching through rubble and debris, he had looked nearly dead: there was blood all over his face. It mixed with sweat and dust until, in the dim light of the fires the firemen had yet to put out, it looked almost black, like oil leaking from a degraded engine gasket.

Happy jumped when she realized she had zoned out and inadvertently let the towel lose some of its circulation-encouraging heat. She gently put the fingers of her free hand on it. The cloth still felt hot - it was nearly burning the hand with which she held it. She made the executive decision - fueled only partially by the fact that she was exhausted - to not reboil it.

The hot-compress process wore on: hold the towel on the cut for five minutes; let the cut air-dry for ten minutes; replace the gauze, without touching the fabric that would touch the cut, and tape it back up. Happy followed the instructions to the letter, for once thankful for her near-perfect memory. By the time she finished, the bold green numbers on the nightstand clock read 12:17.

Toby hadn't brushed his teeth, but Happy figured the cavity risk wasn't worth dragging him out of bed now. She just untied his shoes and pulled them off before tossing them on the floor, far enough from the bed to not be a tripping hazard, but not really close enough to the closet to be considered "put away". Then she walked slowly to the bathroom, brushed her own teeth, and came back.

The leggings and tee shirt she was wearing were close enough to pajamas; she slipped off her shoes, crawled into bed beside Toby. She was awake just long enough to register the sound of Toby's even breathing, and then she fell asleep.


End file.
